Kiowa, and other wild tribes, who had always lived by the chase, it was left with such of them as chose to do so to lead the life of nomads, and that this wild life was sanctioned by Congress, and specific appropriations made for the benefit of such as roamed and hunted, and the further fact that the lands in the reservations of a number of tribes are not susceptible of cultivation, the statistics given, with the product of the labor of those engaged in agricultural and pastoral life, should be sufficient to satisfy the most skeptical that our Indian wards can be made self-supporting, and that with proper care and attention this result may be reached in a very few years.

The opinion that the Indian population is destined in a brief period to disappear prevails to a very great extent among the masses of our people. This is regarded as the unavoidable result of contact with civilization. A careful study of the census of this population through a series of years, with an examination of vital statistics for the past four years, will satisfy the reader that this opinion must be modified, and the conclusion will be reached that the Indians, instead of vanishing, are destined to be and remain with us for ages to come. It is undoubtedly true that from a multiplicity of causes many of the weaker tribes have ceased to exist as such, while the more favored, as well as the more robust ones, have passed through the fearful ordeal, and are slowly increasing in numbers. In 1825 the population of the Cherokee nation, including the half-breeds among them, was 15,000. Between that period and the time of their removal to their present reservation they suffered loss from wars and other causes. In the process of removal they lost nearly onefourth of their number, and during our late civil war Cherokee troops were engaged in the conflict, and hence suffered loss; and yet by the census of 1878 it is seen that the Chero

kees have a population of 21,072. The Chickasaws numbered 2,000 more in 1878 than in 1825. The Delawares now in the Indian Territory show a slight increase over their number in 1854. The population of the Iroquois in New York and Canada in 1877 was 13,668, which considerably exceeds any previous trustworthy estimate of their number for more than a century. Other tribes show a like result. On the other hand, some tribes show a decline in their numbers, the causes for which the careful student of the Indian problem will have no difficulty in reaching. It is a fact that all wild Indians, for a period after the process of civilization begins, diminish in numbers. The use of the white man's food, the restraint from roaming, and the ill-ventilated huts in which they dwell, increases disease, and checks for the time being procreation. In the present state of transition, it is said some Dakota families bear no children. There is one source of diminution by which the census of Indian tribes is reduced which is not real. It is not uncommon at this day for Indian families, who have advanced in civilization more rapidly than their fellows, to sever the tribal relation and become merged with the population in the white settlements. Among the Minnesota Sioux this process is going on with some force.

Within a few years the matter of vital statistics has had considerable attention from the Indian office, and the results are encouraging. From these Mr. S. N. Clark, of the bureau of education, has compiled a table of births and deaths in those tribes whose reports contain information on the subject for the years 1874, 1875, and 1876. The result is as follows: 1874, births, 2,152; deaths, 1,490; 1875, births, 1,985; deaths, 1,601; 1876, births, 2,401; deaths, 2,215. According to the same reports, the number of Indians that received medical treatment, in 1874, was 27,553; in 1875, 46,594; in 1876, 37,232. To attempt to deduce a ratio from these figures would,

said Mr. Clark, yield false results, since the tribes that reported births and deaths from year to year varied. With this explanation, Mr. Clark gives the following figures: In 1874, the births in tribes numbering 48,000 were 1,495; the deaths in tribes numbering 63,772 were 1,047; in 1875, the births in tribes numbering 74,417 were 1,905; and the deaths in tribes numbering 99,309 were 1,566; in 1876, the births in tribes numbering 81,734 were 2,386; and the deaths in tribes numbering 90,590 were 2,195. While this data may not warrant any definite conclusions as to the tendency and ratio of increase, there is sufficient in the figures to dispel the theory, which is so commonly held, that the Indian race is vanishing, and, from natural causes, will soon disappear.

To such of our fellow-citizens as do not feel impelled by the promptings of their better natures and the feelings of humanity to take an interest in the proper solution of the Indian question, the fact that these wards of ours, and their descendants, are destined to be and remain upon the soil for generations, should, from a selfish standpoint, attract their most serious attention. The amount of money disbursed in the payment of annuities and for rations, clothing, and all else connected with the legitimate expenditures of the Indian department, is much less than the amount drawn from the treasury to carry on unjust and cruel wars against the Indians. These wars are exceedingly expensive. As an instance in 1835, a war was begun with the Seminole Indians, in Florida. A few years preceding, Gen. Porter, then secretary of war, estimated the population of these Indians at 4,000. In 1835, Gen. Jackson, then president, was of the opinion that their military strength was about 500 warriors, while Gen. Cass, his secretary of war, estimated the warriors at 750. Lieut. C. A. Harris, then on duty in the Indian service, reported to the war department that the entire Seminole

nation, their negroes included, did not exceed 3,000, and could not bring into the field more than 500 efficient warriors. Gen. Scott, then commanding the troops operating against the Seminoles, in a report, made on the 30th of April, 1836, said: "I am more than ever persuaded that the whole force of the enemy, including negroes, does not exceed 1,200 fighting men. It is probably something less." In 1837, the Indian office gave the number of "Florida Indians," east of the Mississippi, and "under treaty stipulations to remove," at 5,000. During the war the Seminoles had some accessions from the Creeks and from fugitive slaves who had joined them, but the number of both was not large. The war lasted seven years. The whole available force of the regular army was engaged in the combat, and Generals Scott, Clinch, Gaines, Eustis, Jessup, and Worth, with many other experienced and distinguished officers, were on duty. It was in this war that Col. Zachary Taylor, who, in 1848, was elected President of the United States, suggested the use of blood-hounds to accompany the troops operating against the Seminoles. The suggestion was approved, and the animals were brought into use to hunt down the Indians! In addition to the whole force of the regular army, a portion of the navy, and in the aggregate, during the war, more than 20,000 volunteers, were brought into service. In the second year of the war (1836), Gen. Jessup entered the field at the head of one column of 8,000 troops, well provided with all the materials and equipments of war. He had as allies several battalions of Creek Indian warriors. Choctaws and Delawares also joined his standard. This one single Indian war cost upwards of forty millions of dollars! In this war the losses among the troops in the regular army and in the navy were 1,555, and among the volunteers the losses were equal, if they did not exceed that number; making the aggregate of our losses more than three thousand men.

The losses of the Seminoles were not known. Indians always strive to carry off their dead from the battle-field, and conceal the number. Some years after the close of this war, the Seminole Indiaus were removed to the Indian Territory, in which, on a portion of the Creek reservation, they now dwell. A remnant remained in Florida, and still dwells there, and number about 500, and those in the Indian Territory now number 2,500. This Seminole war was inaugurated to drive the Indians out of Florida, when, by an expenditure of a quarter of a million of money, a peaceable removal, without the intervention of the military arm, could, without any doubt, have been effected.

In the preparation of this work there has been no attempt to present a continuous history of the Indian race, or the conflicts with it from the time of the discovery of America. In the most condensed form, such a narrative would fill volumes, and would, in some sense, be a mere repetition, since the story of one Indian war is the story of all. In what is narrated in the several chapters, it has been the object of the author to adhere to facts, and to give a faithful relation of the various forms in which complications with the Indians arise, and the manner in which the civil as well as the military authorities deal with the wards of the government. In what is stated in relation to the assumptions and conduct of the military arm toward the Indian tribes, there is nothing extenuate nor aught set down in malice. It is submitted. that the facts given ought to silence, now and hereafter, the clamor in which military officers have indulged against the civil administration of Indian affairs, and forever dispose of the question of the restoration of the Indian bureau to the war department—a theme on which these officers (with but few exceptions) have indulged, with an assurance amounting to audacity.